Daughter of the Sword (49 page)

So many strange things had happened, and in such quick succession, that Mariko found her thoughts came only in disjointed, stagger-stepped fashion. In hindsight she wasn’t quite sure how she’d come to leave the Imperial Palace, nor how the long, heavy silken bag came to be in her hands. She remembered profuse good-byes and thank-yous, and a slow drive through the verdant grounds under a light rain. And then she was back in the world, stopped at a red light with the emperor’s own sword lying on her lap.

It weighed little more than half as much as Glorious Victory Unsought, and was shorter by the length of her forearm. She could tell that much without unsheathing it—indeed, without even removing it from its black silken bag. The imperial seal, a round, stylized chrysanthemum blossom, was embroidered in gold on the bag, and the bag was tied shut with beautifully woven golden
kumihimo
cord.

A high-pitched digital chime gave her a start. Her cell phone. It was here somewhere. Even as she patted herself down in search of it,
she realized her focus was slipping. Half a night’s sleep, Yamada’s murder, Saori’s capture—they were adding up.

At last she found the phone and flicked it open. “Yeah?”

“You know who this is.”

“Yeah.”

“You have the swords.”

“Yeah.”

The car behind Mariko honked, startling her. She grunted and gave the guy the finger and a few choice words, which prompted a “Well!” from Shoji.

“Who’s with you?”

“Nobody.” Mariko had a lot of tasks before her, shifting into first while holding the phone to her ear while keeping the sword from slipping off her lap, but she managed them all. “I needed help getting your second sword. The one who helped me is in the car with me. She’s old. No threat to you.”

“Hmph!” said Shoji.

Fuchida grumbled. At length he said, “St. Luke’s Hospital. Drive there now. Put your phone on speaker and leave it in your lap. If I hear you talk to anyone at all, your sister dies.”

Mariko heard a yelp from Saori and she did as she was told. “I’ll get there faster if I can run the lights and siren.”

“Don’t even think about it. Tell me the number of your squad car.”

“Five-five-three.”

“If you’re lying, your sister dies. If I see any cop car other than number five-five-three, she dies.”

“You’re at a hospital, Fuchida-san. Cops are known to come there from time to time.”

“Shut up. Do as you’re told.”

She could hear the tension building in him. There was a hard-bitten edge to his voice, and the grumbling continued just beyond her range of hearing. “I’m on my way,” she said.

75

The twin towers of St. Luke’s International Hospital were the tallest buildings within sight. Blue glass and sharp angles dominated, and the towers were connected three-quarters of the way up the shorter tower (halfway up the taller tower) by a walkway that gleamed with sunlight peeking through the thinning clouds. To Mariko the hospital looked like something built out of LEGO.

“I’m here,” she said to her phone.

“There is a building across the street. The only one under construction. Park the car in front of the door.”

Mariko did as she was told, finding the dust-brown building and bringing the squad to a halt in front of a makeshift front wall: two-meter-high plywood lashed to a scaffold skeleton with big fat zip ties looped through drill holes. The door was just a rectangle cut right into the plywood, affixed with hinges and locked by a chain and padlock. It bore signs reading HARD HAT AREA and DO NOT ENTER. Killing the ignition, she said, “You want me to turn the speaker off? So people don’t hear you?”

“Yes. Do it. Get out alone.”

Mariko clicked the speaker button with her thumbnail, then cupped the phone to her thigh. “Wait five minutes, then call the police.” She spoke rapidly and softly, pulling her Sig Sauer P230 from the glove box as she did so. “The radio’s in front of your right hand. You
just push the button and talk, okay? Tell them where I am and that I’m with Fuchida and the hostage. Got it?”

Shoji nodded, and made a strange face when Mariko racked the slide to check her chambered round—an awkward motion with her right hand pressing a phone to her leg.

“Is that a pistol?” said Shoji.

“Of course,” said Mariko. “You don’t expect me to go up there and get in a sword fight with him, do you?”

In the next breath she was back on with Fuchida. “Sorry. Dropped the phone. Very sorry. Please don’t be angry.”

Had she put enough vulnerability in her voice to sell it? It seemed so. Fuchida said, “Stupid shit like that is going to get your sister killed. Don’t do it again.”

Angry, Mariko thought, but not unhinged.

She exited the car, sizing up the building as she did so. Big windows: lots of opportunity for snipers, if only she’d been able to call for one. Fuchida had listened in on her every move, and Shoji, one of the last dinosaurs in Tokyo, didn’t have a cell phone, or else Mariko might have used it to text for backup. It hardly mattered. The windows were highly reflective, and the noon sun rendered everything behind them invisible.

She made sure Fuchida could see her hands if he was watching from inside, then ducked back in the car to retrieve Tiger on the Mountain. The Sig prodded uncomfortably against her floating ribs as she bent, but its weight was a comfort. She readjusted her jacket to cover it and made sure to keep her elbow close to her side to keep the pistol concealed.

Standing up, she felt the prodding of the Cheetah against the small of her back. It too was clipped to her belt, tucked into its little holster. She’d never actually used the holster in the field—she’d been wearing civvies for as long as she owned the Cheetah, and a big, black stun baton had no place in a civilian wardrobe—and now she hoped to hell it was as easy on the draw as she remembered it. Her jacket was already
going to slow her draw, but there was no getting around that if she wanted to keep the weapon concealed. In truth her jacket wasn’t long enough to hide it completely, but her squad would block any view of it from within the building—assuming Fuchida was actually in the building. If he was in the hospital across the street, she might have just revealed her backup weapon.

Damn. Nothing to do about it now. Keep walking. Keep focused.

Mariko popped the trunk, closed the driver’s door, and went to the back of the squad for Glorious Victory Unsought. There was no good way to carry the swords, she realized. Not while keeping the cell to her ear. They deserved more respect than to be clumped together under her armpit. But what choice did she have? “Sorry,” she said to them as she walked toward the door cut into the plywood.

“The padlock is open. Pull on it.”

That was easier said than done, at least for someone who also had to manage two swords, two concealed weapons, a phone, and a rib cage that hurt like hell. But she got the door open and stepped into the cool dark behind it.

“Loop the chain through the door again. Lock it.”

Mariko thought about the building layout. From the street-side windows there was no direct view of this door. Anyone in front of the door could still have been visible, but now that she was under the wooden slats of the scaffolding, she would be hidden from view. No one from the hospital’s side of the street could have seen her either. She pinned the phone between her ear and shoulder, jingled the chain a bit, and clasped the lock through only one end of it. Backup wasn’t likely to get here in time, but she wouldn’t make their job any harder for them.

She wondered whether Shoji would able to figure out how to work her squad’s radio by touch. She wondered, too, whether Fuchida had thought to bring a police scanner with him to listen for the backup call. Was that the sort of thing a seer could foresee? I’d give anything, Mariko thought, to know the future of the next three minutes.

Fuchida had chosen his building well if he wanted a place backup would have a bitch of a time getting to. The roof might have been big enough to drop a tactical team by helicopter, but the high-rises all around would play hell with the wind patterns, and in any case the rotor noise would be a dead giveaway. There had to be another door to the ground floor—fire codes demanded it, even for half-gutted buildings undergoing rehab—but Fuchida wasn’t telling where it was, and Mariko didn’t have time to go looking. There would inevitably be a few cops in the hospital who could act as first responders, but none of them would be Special Assault Team operators, and even if they were, they wouldn’t have any advance intelligence on the building’s layout. Nor would they have the benefit of a psychopath on the phone guiding them in the right direction.

“Fifth floor,” Fuchida said. “Stairs are straight ahead of you, in the back.”

He’d covered everything. She’d be a bit winded when she reached him. If there was an elevator, it was probably stuck open on Fuchida’s floor, and five stories were just enough to make it unlikely that she could beat the elevator in a race to the ground floor. He’d even thought to dust the stairs with gritty concrete mix; even if Mariko had somehow managed to contact SAT or HRT, they’d have a hell of a time getting upstairs without Fuchida hearing their approach.

When she reached the fifth floor, Mariko saw two figures silhouetted against the picture windows that comprised the far wall. One was well muscled, its right hand pointing a curving sword at the unfinished concrete floor. The other silhouette, reed thin, sat in the only chair—indeed, the only piece of furniture—on the whole floor. As she drew closer, Mariko could make out the long, fat zip ties pinning Saori’s wrists and ankles to the square steel legs of the chair. The sight of her made Mariko’s stomach sink.

Apart from the windows, the only source of light was a tall, lonely rectangle far off to the right: the elevator, waiting with its doors propped open. Stacked boxes of linoleum tiles stood guard at various
points around the room, tall and wide enough for someone to hide behind. Sheets of drywall leaned against unfinished walls like huge books on a shelf. The gang box near the elevator blocked lines of sight to the whole back quarter of the floor. Even with a partner, this room would have been a nightmare to clear. Mariko could only hope Fuchida was here solo.

The drawn sword should have been enough to capture Mariko’s attention. Her helpless sister should have been enough. But Mariko was a detective; her brain collected details whether she wanted it to or not. She took in everything about the room without breaking stride, and walked to the nearest stack of boxed floor tiles. Those things were heavy, maybe even heavy enough to stop a bullet, though Mariko didn’t figure Fuchida for a shooter. Even if he’d wanted to shoot her and have done with it, the sword had a hold on him now; if Yamada was right, Beautiful Singer wouldn’t let him trade weapons.

Fuchida’s sword was as long as his arm, and he stood close enough to Saori that Mariko didn’t dare draw down and pipe him. The Sig was a 9-millimeter, too small to guarantee a kill on the first shot. Besides, Fuchida had chosen his ground well. The only thing behind him was a thin sheet of glass, and then St. Luke’s Hospital. She couldn’t shoot until her backdrop was clear.

“Here we are,” Mariko said, laying the swords down on the stacked boxes. “Alone.”

“Not all alone,” Fuchida said. “We have your sister to keep us company.”

Good, Mariko thought. Maybe he was lying, but she didn’t think so. And assuming he was telling the truth, he’d just cleared the room for her.

“You can let her go now. Your swords are here.”

“I’m not an idiot. Let me see them.”

Mariko withdrew Glorious Victory Unsought from its cotton sleeve, then unsheathed the blade halfway and rammed it home. She did the same with the emperor’s sword.

Fuchida took a step toward the Inazumas, then another. Still within sword’s reach of Saori. Still a thousand patients behind him, with no more than dumb luck to protect them from stray rounds. Mariko tried to gauge his mental state, but she couldn’t yet see his backlit face.

Two more steps toward the swords. He moved as though against a windstorm, as if he wore a fifty-kilo backpack. As he drew closer, laboriously closer, Mariko could see more of him, though still not his face. Until now she’d thought he was wearing a skintight shirt, perhaps a spandex runner’s shirt elaborately decorated. Now she saw the pattern clinging to his right shoulder was a tattoo—an ornate spiderweb—and coiled around the other shoulder was either a serpent or a dragon. His hair was long and straight, pulled into a ponytail and capped by a
hachimaki
, the traditional bandana of the samurai. That wasn’t a good sign. The kamikaze pilots had tied on
hachimaki
before they took flight, never to return.

Beautiful Singer gleamed in the sunlight. It was thinner than any sword Mariko had ever seen, calling images to mind of a panther’s wicked, graceful claw, the slashing curve of a shark’s tail.

Another step, and Fuchida stood almost within sword’s reach of Mariko. His silhouette had eclipsed Saori’s now, further frustrating any hope of a clear shot. But he seemed to have forgotten Mariko entirely. For him there seemed to be nothing else in the world except the swords—the swords, and that invisible force he fought against with every movement.

Very slowly, Mariko moved away from the Inazumas, angling her body so he could not see her right hand behind her hip.

Fuchida drew closer. One more step and he’d be in striking range. His body was angled too, right side pulling back toward the windows and his captive, as if Beautiful Singer were pulling him away from the other two swords. He took another step, close enough now to touch the swords. Mariko tensed. Beautiful Singer pulled him back, just out of Mariko’s reach. But Fuchida’s will proved stronger than the
sword’s. He reached out and laid his left hand on Glorious Victory’s scabbard.

The Cheetah crashed down on Fuchida’s forearm, crackling with its 850,000 volts. He roared and pulled away. Mariko darted forward, stabbing Fuchida in the chest with the Cheetah’s head. He grabbed it with his bare left hand. Mariko pulled the trigger. The pain meant nothing to him; he ripped the Cheetah from her grasp.